Windows 7 backup to TrueCrypt Encrypted External Device

Question

First off, forgive me if my tech vocabulary is lacking. I'm fairly new to the stuff, especially regarding encryption. If I'm being too vague please let me know and I'll try to provide more detail. The computer in question is a new-model Samsung running Windows 7. I also have Ubuntu loaded, but haven't been able to access it since installing TrueCrypt (more on that below). The external device in question is a 1TB Western Digital USB hard drive.

I encrypted both my laptop (whole disk encryption) and my external device using TrueCrypt. This was required by my employer for international travel. TC works great and I haven't had too many issues -- except for the following.

Question 1: Encrypted volume is not available

I am trying to create a system backup, and I want the destination to be the external drive. The drive is mounted with TrueCrypt, drive letter assigned, and Windows recognizes the device -- I can open it, browse my files, etc, as usual. However, when I attempt to create a backup, well, I can't. Windows backup opens a troubleshooting dialog box which give me the option to 'Try Again' (I have previously attempted to create backups unsuccessfully, both to my external and to DVD), or to 'Change Backup Settings.' I select 'Change Backup Settings,' to select my external device, but it does not populate on the list of available drives -- only my system (D:) drive and DVD drive. I can mount and unmount my TrueCrypt external device all day long, refreshing the list of available drives each time, but it does not jump onto the list. I have attempted to backup to my system drive as well, in hopes that I could then copy the Backup files to my external hard drive for future use as needed -- that didn't work either. I don't know if TrueCrypt is causing this malfunction or not, but I would really like to be able to restore my laptop if something were to happen to it. Any ideas?

Question 2: Can't access Ubuntu (dualboot)

On a semi-unrelated note, since I have installed TrueCrypt on my machine, I can no longer access my Ubuntu OS. Not a big deal, as I don't need it for work, but the Ubuntu partitions there are taking up space which I can no longer use from my Windows 7 OS (right?). Furthermore, the whole point of my installing Ubuntu in the first place was to gain some familiarization with Linux systems, which I can no longer do. I think the problem is that I executed a whole-disk encryption with TrueCrypt, but for a single-boot system. I attempted, at the time, to encrypt for multi-boot, but for some reason was unable to do so. Now, when I power on my machine, the authentication screen comes up where there was once a BIOS-type screen allowing me to select which OS I wanted to boot (Ubuntu, Windows 7 or Windows Recovery, etc). Any ideas there?

Answer 1

Truecrypt doesn't work with Windows backups. I had to encrypt my external drive with bitlocker to get windows backup to work correctly with it.